The 2008 historical drama The Boy in the Striped Pajamas follows Bruno (Asa Butterfield), an 8-year-old German boy whose father (David Thewlis) is a Nazi, and moves him and his family to live near Auschwitz, a concentration camp during World War II. While there, Bruno meets Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy who is the same age that’s being held captive in the concentration camp.

The two boys become friends, despite the barbed wire fence between them, and remain unaware of the genocidal war going on around them. Based on John Boyne’s 2006 novel of the same name, the tear-jerking film brings a story of youth and innocence into a historical period of mass violence and division.

Is The Boy in the Striped Pajamas based on a true story? Read on to learn more.

No. Despite its historical setting, both the film and novel are works of fiction. In fact, while some praise the story as a tale of morality that simultaneously introduces children to the subject of the Holocaust, others have critiqued the manner in which the story has been commonly used in classrooms to teach students about the Holocaust, as many students have fallen under the misconception that it is based on a true story.

A report conducted by University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education featured in The Guardian in January 2022 stated the following: “While most young people who took part in the study recognised the narrative as a work of fiction and many were able to identify and critique its most glaring implausibilities and historical inaccuracies, they nonetheless overwhelmingly characterised it as ‘realistic’ and/or ‘truthful.”

The study found that 84.4% of students surveyed who said they had seen a film about the Holocaust had been referring to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and that it was both the most read novel and most-watched film about the Holocaust among English students.

The report noted that students who studied the story often came to conclusions that “contributed significantly to one of the most powerful and problematic misconceptions of this history, that ‘ordinary Germans’ held little responsibility and were by and large ‘brainwashed’ or otherwise entirely ignorant of the unfolding atrocities.”

Others have defended Boyne’s right to create works of fiction, including Boyne himself, who said that “fiction cannot be factually inaccurate” per the Irish Mirror. He told The Guardian, “As a novelist, I believe that fiction can play a valuable role in introducing difficult subjects to young readers, but it is the job of the teacher to impress upon their students that there is legitimate space between imagination and reality.”